"Unmixed Milk" Again

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Notes and Discussions 389

made him brave and successful. Hence — to return to our passage in B —
Van Leeuwen's punctuation is justifiable and gives the most natural
meaning: "We know this well in our hearts (and ye are witnesses there-
unto — all whom the fates of death have not carried off within these last few
days): When the ships were gathering at Aulis, etc."

Samuel E. Bassett
University op Vermont

"UNMIXED MILK" AGAIN

Polyphemus' aKprjrov ydXa (Odyssey 9. 297) has been brought to
the fore in recent years by Professors Oldfather (Class. Phil., VIII, 195)
and Robbins (ibid., X, 442). The former recommends a return to what
seems to have been the interpretation of Eustathius, that the aKpryrov
ydXa, with which the Cyclops "washed down" his horrid meal, was the
uncurdled milk which he had set aside at his evening milking "against
supper." It will be remembered that half of the milk was curdled for
cheese. Professor Oldfather assumes that this curdling was done by mixing
in the pail a few drops of ojtos and that the rest of the milk, not so treated,
was therefore "unmixed." Eduard Hermann, in his Sprachwissenschaft-
licher Kommentar zu ausgewahlte Stucken aus Homer, agrees with Professor
Oldfather.

Professor Robbins is not concerned mainly with what Homer means,
but with what Euripides thought he meant. From a passage in the Cyclops
(216-19) he shows that if Euripides were today asked to contribute a note
on the Homeric line in question he would in all probability say that some-
times Polyphemus mixed goats' milk and sheep's milk and sometimes, as
on this particular occasion, he drank it aKp-qrov.

Neither of these two writers regards with favor one of the usually accepted
interpretations, which assumes, on the strength of the passage in question
apparently, that the Greeks, in the interest of Massigkeit (Ameis, notes
ad loc.) and their digestions, regularly diluted their milk with water and that
the Unmassigkeit of Polyphemus is borne out by his intemperate drinking of
his milk "straight."

Professor Oldfather also disapproves of the view of those commentators
who see a bit of intentional humor in the use of words that will bring up in
the hearers' minds aKprp-os oivos.

The solution offered by Professor Oldfather would carry more conviction
if he had adduced any instance of the use of Kcpdwvfu in this process
of making cheese, in order to justify the application of the term aKprjrov
to milk in its natural state. But in the passage from the Iliad (v. 902 f.)
on which he bases his theory because of the reference there to the use of
ottos in curdling milk, mixing is, quite naturally, expressed by KVKam, and
curdling and congealing by crvp.Trrjyvvp.1. and jrcptTpe'<^o^ai (Herodian's
reading).

390 Notes and Discussions

However, in spite of skepticism in regard to this explanation of the
meaning of aKpiyrov, my reason for reopening the matter is not to start
a debate on the question of the proper vocabulary for Homer to use in
cheese-making, but to bring in two parallels from Latin literature which
have apparently been overlooked by all commentators in their efforts at
securing illumination upon this subject. In the absence of any other use
of aKprjTov yaXa by Greek writers it is not at all impossible that these Latin
passages have some value.

Ovid (Fasti iv. 369), in explaining why a simple salad is offered to
Cybele, says:

Lacte mero veteres usi memorantur et herbis
Sponte sua si quas terra ferebat, ait.

Lucretius (De Rerum Nat. i. 257-61) concludes his discussion of the
indestructibility of matter with a happy pastoral scene:

.... fessae pecudes pingui per pabula laeta
corpora deponunt et candens lacteus umor
uberibus manant distentis; hinc nova proles
artubus infirmis teneras lasciva per herbas
ludit lacte mero mentesperculsa novellas.

It is possible to assume that in the Ovidian passage mero equals English
mere and that the thought is that men of old, before wine came into use
(.Seymour, Life in the Homeric Age, p. 217), or because of their temperate
habits, lived on very plain fare, nothing but milk and vegetables. The
quotation from Lucretius, however, is of a different stamp. We have
here (259-61) a playful picture of the visible effects of the strongest
drink that the young lambs have, aKptrrov yaXa. It goes to their heads
(mentes perculsa) and they frisk about on shaky legs. But why mero
lacte? Obviously it is intended to suggest merum vinum and the effect of
such a drink on mankind. Bockeimiller recognizes this as the meaning of
the passage in his note on artvhus infirmis (260): "Junge Lammer, welche
den sicheren Gebrauch ihrer Glieder noch nicht besitzen, machen den
Eindruck von Trunkenen, die auch nicht Herren fiber ihre Glieder sind."
Giussani (on p. 261 )expresses the same view more explicitly: "L'aggiunta
di mero a lacte pare voglia ricordare il vino, e far meglio sentire l'effetto
inebriante del latte sulle anime novelline." This interpretation of the
Lucretian mero lacte accords exactly with what Professors Perrin and Sey-
mour (notes ad loc.) have to say of the Homeric axp^Tov: "The epithet is
half-humorous with yaXa from the custom of diluting wine." There is, to
be sure, a difference in the setting of the two passages, but in spite of Pro-
fessor Oldfather's objections to a joke amid the grewsomeness of the scene,
I am inclined to believe that the poet who was capable of the OJt« joke
and the irvparov ISojuai joke, was also quite capable of a humorous touch
here.

Notes and Discussions 391

A guess at the meaning of Lucretius does not, of course, establish the
meaning of Homer, but it seems desirable that merum lac should be con-
sidered in the interpretation of aKprfrov yd\a.

J. 0. LOFBEEG

University op Texas

CORRECTION UPON THE "LAND REGISTERS UNDER
THE SELEUCIDS" 1

Professor Eduard Meyer, of Berlin, has very kindly called my attention
to Wiegand's publication in 1908 of a large and important addition to the
Laodice document (O.G.I. 225) 2 which had entirely escaped my notice.
The additions which are made are: four lines (complete) of the letter of
King Antiochus II to the satrap Metrophanes; the ends of the following
four lines, so that we now have the king's letter in its entirety; and the
second half of the letter of the satrap Metrophanes to Nicomachus, over-
seer of the royal domain in the Hellespontine satrapy.

The letter of King Antiochus begins:

Daisius. King Antiochus to Metrophanes greeting. We have sold to
Laodice the village of Pannus and Baris and the countryside going with the
village, bounded by the territory of Zelea and that of Cyzicus, and by the road,
the old one, which formerly ran above the village of Pannus but has since been
ploughed up by the peasants living near, by reason of the demarcation of the
estate. For the present village of Pannus happens to have been established
later.

The information given in this new portion of the king's letter alters in
one important particular the weight of the evidence upon which my deduc-
tions were based in my recent attempt to reconstruct from the available
testimony a rough picture of the land registers of the Seleucids. I had
concluded that the central land register could not furnish the irpocropurpaL or
mpiopicTKoi, the detailed boundary descriptions, of the estates of the royal
domains. 3 It is now evident that in the case, at least, of the transfer of the
Udwov K<bfirj to Laodice the central registry of the king was certainly in a
position to give the exact boundaries of this land unit. Furthermore the
agents of the central registry knew, when the king's letter was written, that
the village of Pannus had not existed on the estate as originally delimited.

It is, of course, possible that this information had been sent in to one or
the other of the contracting parties, Antiochus or Laodice, by some agent

J Printed in Classical Philology, XVI (1921), 12-19.

2 Th. Wiegand, "Sechster vorlaufiger Bericht iiber Ausgrabungen in Milet und
Didyma," in Abhandlungen der Berliner Akademie, 1908, p. 36.

s See Classical Philology, XVI (1921), 16, 18.